How did Ranters come to say these naughty words?
Jan/080
I have been reading some recently about Zed Shaw’s rant (incidentally, if you Google for “zed shaw rant” you get his piece on why programmers need to know statistics, which is a good one). But the rant I mean is, of course, his curse on the houses of Rails. I actually live in the ‘hood, and it’s not that bad, so I don’t exactly understand why “ghetto” gets to be the term of opprobrium, but whatever. Also, as I read his rant, I frequently think, WWZD? (What would Zed do?) I don’t know. Googling for WWZD does not bring up anything about our Zed, which is too bad.
In any case, Zed really is a smart guy, and Utu is neat. His talk on Utu for the Boston Ruby Group made me think – watch it.
But what’s really been bugging me about this, and I bet Zed knows this, is that the Ranters were the good guys. They really just wanted to love everyone:
Maybe that’s why they were so hated. I am thinking that a really great Ruby on Rails rant would be more in the spirit of “minaswan,” and would remind us of all of the good that Rails has brought the world. Rails can’t solve all the problems (though you get your “each”) — but if you’re looking for a savior, or the framework equivalent of John Lennon, god help you.
Most annoying prophylactic dialog of all time?
Jan/080
My work computer has Outlook 2007, and there are various protections to keep COM add-ins from manipulating your address book.
I have a number of add-ins such as Plaxo and others. But check this out:
Uh . . . like which program is going after my address book? Would it have been so hard to let me know?
Thank you, MySQL
Jan/084
For not following ANSI only for “not equals” and allowing as well != (which I can shove into XML without escaping).
Gracenote; ripping CDs on Windows
Jan/082
I rip my CDs on Windows . . . for my own personal use, of course. I used to use MusicMatch because I loved the “all you can eat” streaming subscription. But since MusicMatch got absorbed by Yahoo Music, it hasn’t been an option (Yahoo Music’s selection isn’t as good, and I don’t think the player is tied to AllMusic.com).
So anyway . . . A huge frustration with MusicMatch was that its CDDB sucked big time. Anything new or even slightly obscure would not be found, and I’d have to type in the songs myself. Plus, the MusicMatch ripper would not keep the per-track artist, which was deadly for anthologies.
In looking around for an alternative, I noticed that WinAmp pro throws in a subscription to Gracenote (probably the best CDDB out there – they were the orginators), and the Pro version of WinAmp is only about $20.
Wow, what a change. It has matched much more stuff, and WinAmp respects the per-track artists: So, particularly for quasi-historical anthologies (such as Mojo’s) I’m not always going back to the CD case to see what they heck I’m listening to.
Meanwhile, Mighty Baby’s track “Egyptian Tomb” (1969): Good grief, why didn’t this get wider circulation!?
